Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2. Oliphant Margaret
poor dear fellow! and my poor girl is such an invalid. I hope your daughter is pretty well? Come this way. I hope I shall see a great deal of you. Mr. Tufton takes such an interest in his young brother; all that he wants is a little good advice – that is what the minister always tells me. All that Mr. Vincent wants, he says, is a little good advice.”
The latter part of this was communicated in a whisper, as the two ladies seated themselves in the minister’s pew. After a momentary pause of private devotion, Mrs. Tufton again took up the strain where she had left it off.
“I assure you, we take the greatest interest in him at the cottage. He doesn’t come to see us so often as Mr. Tufton would wish, but I daresay he has other things to do. The minister often says to me that he is a precious young man, is Mr. Vincent, and that a little good advice and attention to those that know better is all he wants to make him a shining light; and I am sure he will want no good advice Mr. Tufton can give him. So you may keep your mind easy – you may keep your mind quite easy. In any difficulty that could occur, I am sure the minister would act as if he were his own son.”
“You are very kind; but I hope no difficulty will occur,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a little quiver in her lip.
“I hope not, indeed; but there are so many people to please in a flock,” said the late minister’s wife, with a sigh. “We always got on very well, for Mr. Tufton is not one to take a deal of notice of any unpleasantness; but you know as well as I do that it takes a deal of attention to keep all matters straight. If you’ll excuse me, it’s a great pity Mr. Vincent has gone away to-day. Nothing would have made my husband leave his post just as he was intimated to begin a course of lectures. It’s very excusable in Mr. Vincent, because he hasn’t that experience that’s necessary. I always say he’s very excusable, being such a young man; and we have no doubt he’ll get on very well if he does but take advice.”
“My son was very unwilling to go; but it was quite necessary. His sister,” said Mrs. Vincent, clasping her hands tight under her shawl to balance the pang in her heart, “was with some friends – whom we heard something unpleasant about – and he went to bring her home. I expect them – to-morrow.”
The poor mother shut her lips close when she had said the words, to keep in the cry or sob that seemed bursting from them. Yes, God help her, she expected them; perhaps to-morrow – perhaps that same dreadful night; but even in the height of her anguish there occurred to Mrs. Vincent a forlorn prayer that they might not come back that Sunday. Rather another agonising night than that all the “Chapel folks” should be aware that their pastor was rushing wildly along distant railways on the day of rest. The fact that he was doing so added a pang to her own trouble. Total disarrangement, chaos, all the old habitudes of life gone to wreck, and only desperation and misery left, was the sensation produced by that interruption of all religious use and wont. It came upon her with an acute sting, to think that her poor young minister was travelling that Sunday; just as in Arthur’s own experience at that same moment, the utter incoherence, chaos, and wretchedness into which his life had suddenly fallen, breathed upon him in the sound of the church-bells.
“Dear me, I am very sorry!” said Mrs. Tufton; “some fever or something, I suppose – something that’s catching? Dear, dear me, I am so sorry! but there are some people that never take infection; a little camphor is such a nice thing to carry about – it can’t do any harm, you know. Mrs. Tozer tells me he is a very nice young man, Mr. Vincent’s friend from ’Omerton. I don’t like to say such a thing of a girl, but I do believe your son could have that Phoebe any day for asking, Mrs. Vincent. I can’t bear forward girls, for my part – that is her just going into the pew, with the pink bonnet; oh, you know her! – to be sure, Mrs. Pigeon remarked you were sure to go there; though I should have hoped we would have seen you as soon as any one in Carlingford.”
“Indeed, I have been much disappointed not to call. I – I hope I shall – tomorrow,” said the widow, to whom tomorrow loomed dark like another world, and who could not help repeating over and over the dreaded name.
“That is Maria Pigeon all in white – to be only tradespeople they do dress more than I approve of,” said Mrs. Tufton. “My Adelaide, I am sure, never went like that. Many people think Maria a deal nicer-looking than Phœbe Tozer, but her mother is so particular – more than particular – what I call troublesome, you know. You can’t turn round without giving her offence. Dear me, how my tongue is going! the minister would say I was just at my old imprudent tricks – but you, that were a minister’s wife, can understand. She is such a difficult woman to deal with. I am sure Mr. Tufton is always telling them to wait, and that Mr. Vincent is a young man yet, and experience is all he wants. I wish he had a good wife to keep him straight; but I don’t know that that would be advisable either, because of Phœbe and the rest. Dear, dear, it is a difficult thing to know what to do! – but Mr. Tufton always says, If he had a little more experience – Bless me, the young man is in the pulpit!” said Mrs. Tufton, coming to a sudden standstill, growing very red, and picking up her hymn-book. Very seldom had the good woman such a chance of talk. She ran herself so out of breath that she could not join in that first hymn.
But Mrs. Vincent, who had a sensation that the pew, and indeed the whole chapel, trembled with the trembling that was in her own frame, but who felt at the same time that everybody was looking at her, and that Arthur’s credit was involved, stood up steadfastly, holding her book firm in both her hands, and with an effort almost too much for her, the heroism of a martyr, added her soft voice, touched with age, yet still melodious and true, to the song of praise. The words choked her as she uttered them, yet with a kind of desperate courage she kept on. Praise! – it happened to be a very effusive hymn that day, an utterance of unmitigated thanksgiving; fortunately she had not sufficient command of her mind or wits to see clearly what she was singing, or to enter into the wonderful bitter difference between the thanks she was uttering and the position in which she stood. Could she give God thanks for Susan’s ruin, or rejoice in the light He had given, when it revealed only misery? She was not called upon to answer that hard question. She stood up mechanically with her white face set in pale steadfastness, and was only aware that she was singing, keeping the tune, and making herself noways remarked among the crowd of strange people, many of whom turned curious eyes towards her. She stood with both her feet set firm on the floor, both her hands holding fast to the book, and over the ache of frightful suspense in her heart came the soft voice of her singing, which for once in her life meant nothing except a forlorn determination to keep up and hold herself erect and vigilant, sentinel over Arthur’s fortunes and his people’s thoughts.
Mr. Beecher’s sermon was undeniably clever; the Salem folks pricked up their ears at the sound of it, recalling as it did that period of delightful excitation when they were hearing candidates, and felt themselves the dispensers of patronage. That was over now, and they were wedded to one; but the bond of union between themselves and their pastor was far from being indissoluble, and they contemplated this new aspirant to their favour with feelings stimulated and piquant, as a not inconsolable husband, likely to become a widower, might contemplate the general female public, out of which candidates for the problematically vacant place might arise. Mrs. Pigeon, who was the leader of the opposition, and whose daughter Mr. Vincent had not distinguished, whose house he had not specially frequented, and whom, most of all, he had passed in the street without recognition, made a note of this man from ’Omerton. If the painful necessity of dismissing the present pastor should occur – as such things did occur, deplorable though they were – it might be worth while sending for Mr. Beecher. She made a note of him privately in her mind, as she sat listening with ostentatious attention, nodding her head now and then by way of assent to his statements. Mrs. Vincent remarked her as she watched the congregation from the minister’s pew, with her jealous mother’s eyes. The Tozers were not so devoted in their listening. Mrs. Tozer’s brilliant cherry-coloured bonnet visibly drooped once or twice with a blessed irregularity of motion; all these signs Mrs. Vincent perceived as she sat in preternatural acute consciousness of everything round her, by Mrs. Tufton’s side. She was even aware that the sermon was clever; she remembered expressions in it long after, which somehow got burned in, without any will of hers, upon her breaking heart. The subdued anguish that was in her collected fuel for its own silent consuming fire, even in the congregation of Salem, where, very upright, very watchful, afraid to